Standing in my kitchen here in the BVI last night it struck me how differently we live in our homes in France & the BVI. We have a terrace here too. A roof-top one with a dynamite view of Road Harbour. There’s always plenty of activity, especially during high season. The Cruise Ship Dock normally has at least one ship at it. On busy days there is often a third, and even a fourth, ship anchored off with its tenders running passengers ashore. There are a number of boats on the dock in front of the house that offer excursions to the cruise ship passengers. We irreverently term them “the newly-weds, the over-feds and the nearly-deads!”
Weekend mornings and week-day afternoons see school children out in Optimists and Lasers, receiving instruction from the staff of the Royal BVI Yacht Club. There are often dinghy regattas that take place in the harbour which are fun to watch, particularly if it’s a blustery day.
Pelicans make frequent suicide runs on the schools of fry that swim in the shallows, and little blue night herons perch sharp-eyed in search of their next meal. The funny thing is that we almost never use this terrace.
Here’s where it gets weird. As you know at Les Terraces we have not one, but 2 terraces. They are what gave the house its name. You’ve seen the view. It is, for us at least, addictive. We’re out at all hours of the day and night – watching the world drift by, the planes making their approaches to the small air strip Port Ste-Foy, the fishermen whiling the hours away (escaping their wives??) on both sides of the river, and the teenagers snogging on the benches along the Quai de la Bréche thinking that they do so unseen!
I have to wonder why it is that we use our terraces in France so much more than we do here in the BVI. Perhaps some of the reason is that it is by stepping onto the terraces in France that we have the best of the views. Our sitting room here in Tortola has floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows, so the view can be seen without moving. Another possible factor is that the terrace here is up another flight of stairs, actually above the sitting room and it’s a faff carting plates, glasses, food and wine up there, instead of being able to step straight out onto it. Weather is certainly an element of influence (no pun intended, of course) – we don’t have any shade cover on the terrace, so it is most often too bright and hot, or it is too windy. So, with the exception of a couple of days in the year, it is used only for drying the laundry!
